KIRKUS REVIEW

Piano technician Frank Ryan, having
fled his hometown in British Columbia after things got too hot there (Beethoven’s Tenth, 2015), finds Tokyo just as
dangerous in the aftermath of the Fukushima earthquake.

Most of the pupils Frank gives
piano lessons to are no more talented than Mrs. Ogawa, whose life will clearly
end before she masters “Clair de Lune.” But a young woman named Akiko is
a standout for her native gifts, her quick intelligence, and her shadowy
protector Goto, the yakuza she calls her father who’s actually her lover. On their
very first meeting, Goto offers Frank, who’s living from one cash-paying lesson
to the next, a gig tickling the ivories in the Tom and Mary Jazz Lounge. The
dream job, which provides a respectable base salary and hefty tips, seems too
good to be true, and of course it is. Soon enough, Frank’s hooked up with Momo,
an attractive 30-year-old who works in a Shibuya pastry shop. Momo tells Frank
that Goto killed her brother, Ryu, one of the Fukushima Fifty hired by
the yakuza to contain the radioactive fallout
at the stricken reactor. After she meets Frank at the Fifteen Love Hotel, she
begs him to watch for a chance to peek inside Goto’s alligator briefcase, which
she’s convinced is filled with ill-gotten cash and revealing papers, like a
complete list of the Fukushima Fifty. It all sounds so simple. Thanks to
Harvey’s parsimonious plotting and his hero’s laconic voice, it actually is
simple.

Even if the hero’s Tokyo fling ends
on a decidedly downbeat note, this little prose poem is as pellucid and finely
wrought as a haiku.

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